Water Test Kits 101 Video Transcript

Welcome to Water Wisdom sponsored by WaterFilters.NET. I’m your host, Aquaman, and today’s video is about water testing kits. Now if you’ve just got average municipal water and you don’t really care that much, you just want your water to taste a little bit better. Buy a filter system; you probably don’t need to worry about a testing kit but, if you’re a little bit more concerned about what’s in your water, you’re not sure what’s in your water. Maybe there’s rumor around town that there is something going on with the municipal water and you’re concerned. Maybe you have well water and now you have no idea what’s in it because there’s no one regulating your water, you need a testing kit. There are a variety of kit’s available, one of the most popular and basic and simple kit’s to use is this kit from Culligan, we call it the TK-2. It’s capable of testing for hardness, hardness is what’s going to cause calcium and lime buildup on your shower heads, and on your faucet fixtures, it’s probably white or grey; it’s scale, it’s hardness minerals accumulating, you can test for that. You can’t test for pH, maybe you have acidic water; you’re springing leaks in your copper pipes, or your hot water heater suddenly burst wide open, why did this happen; maybe you have acidic water. It also tests for nitrates and nitrites, chlorine, chloramines which is a byproduct when your municipality not only uses chlorine but also ammonia in combination with chlorine to sanitize the water. They combine and make these nasty things that nobody should drink called chloramines; it tests for those. It also tests for iron in low levels, not going to be appropriate for well water that’s got a really bad iron problem but, municipal water, if you’ve got a little bit of iron, this will alert you to that fact. It’s inexpensive, it’s easy to use, as with most of these kit’s you have these little test strips, they come in little aluminum foil packages, you open one up, you pour a glass of water from the tap, you dip the test strip in the water for the specified amount of time, watch and read the instructions and then you compare the color of the test strip to a chart and you find out how many parts per million of iron you have, you find out how many parts per million of free chlorine, you find out how many grains per gallon of hardness you have etc. This is a great kit, and as I said it is inexpensive and it’s easy to use, a great basic kit for anyone who wants to know a little bit more about their water. Now if you have a broader range of concerns there are other test kits that do more. There are these kits that are designed for both well water specifically, and municipal water and in this kit for example we have lead which wasn’t in that other kit, pesticides, something you’re going to find in well water, depending on what part of the country you live in. Similar things over here in this test kit. Because this is for well water it also includes a test for bacteria. And then we have other test kits, maybe you are concerned about mold in your water, you cannot underestimate how wicked mold is; it is nasty deadly stuff, you don’t want to mess around with it, if you’ve got it in your home, you may have it in your water and, it’s something you want to test for. You ever been at work and you go up to the water cooler, and you look at the thing and you’re like, whoa, they haven’t cleaned this thing in 10 years, what is going on inside there, what kind of growth is in there? Here’s a little test kit that you can take to work, use this little vial that’s provided, follow the instructions and test the water quality in that, you know, thing at work that has been sitting there for a decade, you can never be too careful. This is another bacteria test kit appropriate for well water situations, any untreated water really. Any water that you think may be contaminated with microorganisms you’re going to want to use a test-kit like this. Maybe you have radon, maybe you’re up in the New England area, and maybe you’ve got radon in your water, this is radiation essentially, it’s cancer-causing, it’s nasty stuff and you need to know about it and deal with it if you have it. It’s really easy to take care of it once you know you’ve got it but, you need a test-kit like this for radon to find out about it. Really, the best test-kit that we have that’s got a variety of things, this test kit would be good for both municipal or well-water and listen to this list of contaminants. Bacteria, nitrates, nitrites, hydrogen sulphite, that’s what makes this kit unique, I don’t have another kit available that tests for hydrogen sulphide and if you’ve got that, you know it, because it’s that rotten egg smell and it’s just ugh, yuck, that’s caused by hydrogen sulphide, it tests for that, hardness alkalinity, chlorine let’s see, free chlorine, total chlorine, chlorides, copper, sulphates, iron, PH; it’s a very comprehensive test, very reasonably priced and an excellent choice for a comprehensive test kit. Now, if these things don’t cover the bases sufficiently for you. If you have an extraordinarily complex water problem, 95% of the time a test kit like this is all you’re going to need but, if you have got something really different, really unique, maybe you have had a water professional out and he’s scratching his head he can’t figure it out, it’s time to move up to a professional test kit. This is a laboratory test kit, it’s a little more expensive, this is going to be delivered to your home, you’re going to freeze the icepack, the next day you’re going to take the vials that are provided, fill them up with the water samples, pack them in the Styrofoam with the ice pack you got and then you’re going to UPS over night this to a laboratory address that we provide and they are going to do a detailed laboratory analysis on your water. We’re talking 98 plus contaminants everything that could possibly be in your water will be analyzed, if it’s there you will know about it, and then someone like myself, in the technical support department at WaterFilters.NET can take those results and help you analyze them and find a solution that will work for your water problem. You probably most of the time don’t need this; something like this is more than sufficient 95% of the time but, in rare cases, step up to the professional kit, get it done by a laboratory and no more second-guessing. And also for teachers and students, we offer this science project kit complete with, I’m not sure if this is a CD or DVD I probably should have checked, looks like it’s a CD rom with instructions and, 10 test kits for a wide spectrum of contaminates, perfect for your junior high, senior high science project, science fair kind of experiment, want to know what’s going on with your water this is a great choice, it’s a little more expensive than these and a little less expensive then these, kind of an inbetweener and a great choice for teachers and students.